Using "they" in the singular

Some people, myself included, use the word they as a singular gender-indeterminate pronoun, instead of defaulting to he, or using he/she, or expanding with he or she, or other new-age pronouns like zie, sie and hir.

W.M. Thackeray, for example, wrote in Vanity Fair in 1848, “A person can't help their birth,” and more recent writers such as George Bernard Shaw and Anne Morrow Lindbergh have also used this construction, in sentences such as “To do a person in means to kill them,” and “When you love someone you do not love them all the time.”

However, despite the convenience of third-person plural forms as substitutes for generic he and for structurally awkward coordinate forms like his/her, many people avoid using they to refer to a singular antecedent out of respect for the traditional grammatical rule concerning pronoun agreement.

"They" is sometimes used as a third-personsingulargender-neutralpronoun. Some grammar mavens may disagree, and consider the construct to be vulgar. Other insist that concern over using "they" in a singular context is pedantry. Some even consider the condemnation utterly incorrect as most grammarians who denounce the use of "they" in the singular are basing their judgement on the rules of the Latin language.

In any case, the lack of a widely accepted, formal set of gender-neutral pronouns poses a significant burden on the English writer. The use of "one," "he or she," or "he/she" are often awkward, particulary when they are used repeatedly. "It," when applied to a person is dehumanizing, and the classic form, "he," is often seen as sexist as well as being awkward in some situations. Many notable writers simply fall back on the commonly used "they."